to the episcopal court, accompanied him. During the three-quarters of an hour that the walk occupied, the crowd kept saying:--suppose the governor should refuse to give up his victim; suppose the bastard’s agents have already carried him away--perhaps put him to death? None of these suppositions was realised. Deep in a dungeon of the castle, the poor man, heavily chained, in utter darkness, wrecked both in mind and body, was giving way to the blackest melancholy. Suddenly he hears a noise. He listens; he seems to recognise well-known voices: it was his brothers and his friends arriving noisily under the walls of the castle, and giving utterance to their joy. Their success was, however, less certain than it appeared to them. Strange things were, in fact, taking place at that moment in Geneva. The bishop and the duke had not been so passive as had been imagined, and at the very instant when the messenger bearing the order from the episcopal court, and accompanied by a body of Genevans, was leaving by the French gate, a courier, with an order from the Roman court, entered by the Savoy gate. The latter went with all speed to the bishop’s representatives, and handed them the pontifical letters which the princes had obtained, and by which the pope _annulled the censures of the metropolitan_. This Roman messenger brought in addition an order from the bishop forbidding them _on their lives_ to release Pécolat. The bastard had shuddered at the thought that the wretch whom he had so successfully tortured, might escape him: he had moved heaven and earth to keep him in prison. We may imagine the emotion and alarm which fell upon the episcopal councillors when they read the letters handed to them. The coincidence of the moment when these two contradictory orders left Geneva and arrived there is so striking, that we may ask whether these letters from Rome and Turin were not supposed--invented by the episcopal officers themselves; but there is nothing in the narrative to indicate a trick. ‘_Immediately_ on reading the letters, the episcopal officers _with all diligence_ countermanded the release.’ These words in the ‘Annals’ show the precipitation with which they endeavoured to repair the mistake they had committed. There was not, in fact, a moment to lose, if they wished to keep Pécolat. Several officers got on horseback and set off full gallop.